The Intimacy Factor

By Pia Mellody and Lawrence S. Freundlich

Friday, November 27th, 2009 | Originally published in the MeadowLark Fall/Winter 2009 Newsletter

This is an excerpt from The Intimacy Factor, pages 143-145.

The concept of being at the center is key to our spiritual well-being. Although spiritual well-being is often associated with a state of mind, I have come to think of centeredness as having the force of a physical law of nature, like gravity or the conservation of energy. When we operate out of the center of our core issues through the practice of boundaries, our self-esteem is automatically restored. If I were to draw the wheel of human life, at its hub I would put centeredness, and the spokes that radiate out from it would be the attributes of our authentic humanity. When that wheel is put into motion by boundary practice, self-esteem is generated, and we are back at the place of authenticity, the place we reclaim as our spiritual home.

The two grand lies children hear from parents are that they are "better than" or "less than." The truth is that a child, as well as every other human on the planet, has inherent worth. It is not a quality that bears comparison. It is an absolute value, and we all have it. We differ from one another, but not in terms of inherent worth.

Dysfunctional, immature parents abuse children when they give them the message that they are "better than" or "less than." When the message is that they are "less than," this disempowering abuse shames them. If it is falsely empowering abuse, children become exalted above their parents. They exercise more power than the parents within the dysfunctional family system and literally take care of them.

But whether children are abused and disempowered ("less than") or abused and falsely empowered ("better than"), whether they become the Scapegoat or the Hero/Heroine, they will be painfully damaged. Neither persona is their authentic self. The Scapegoat is a bad god. The Hero/Heroine is a good god.

Shamed children feel less than human - defective - and this perceived defectiveness is a pernicious lie. They live in a spiritual distortion in which they believe that they are defective and that God would never love them. Their counterpart, falsely empowered children, know no other god but themselves. It will become a crippling burden.

That original parent-to-child wounding causes deep spiritual wounding. In each of the core areas of their authentic selves, these children will become unbalanced: They will operate from "less than" or "better than," with walls for boundaries or with no boundaries. They will be too dependent or antidependent. They will be confident of their truth or not be able to tell truth from lies. They will be arrogant or self-loathing, rigid or out-of-control, exuberant or withdrawn, overly mature or overly childish. These children will be in a spiritual skew, unable to find balanced emotional centeredness.

Damage to every core issue results in extremes: "less than," "better than"; no boundaries, walls; "I am a good person," "I am a bad person"; "I want others to help me," "I don't want any help"; "I am rigid," "I am a spewer." Recovery lies at the center of these extremes. ∞